Some units have panoramic views of the New York City skyline and solar panels dot the four-floor structure’s roof, which visitors can access via elevator.

Today, city officials heralded Baxter Park’s amenities and modern design during a ribbon cutting ceremony to celebrate the opening of the $21.7 million building on a site where a sprawling, dangerous public housing complex with a similar name once stood.

“Once a place to avoid and one where few would choose to live, this area has now become an incubator of this city’s revitalization,” said Rep. Donald Payne Jr. (D-10th Dist.), a former Newark councilman. “This building will reinvigorate Newark’s people.”

The Newark Housing Authority built Baxter Park with help from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development on same Sussex Avenue block that used to house the Baxter Terrace complex.

When it opened in 1941, Baxter Terrace provided desirable affordable housing for some 500 working class and poor families in Newark. But over time, the low-rise brick buildings deteriorated into an open-air drug market and a breeding ground for crime.

Keith Kinard, the housing authority’s executive director, said future construction on the site will occur in two phases and include a school, supermarket, fitness center and 300 additional residential units. The project will cost more than $100 million more to complete.

“This project replaces what had become a blighted eyesore in the city’s historic downtown,” Kinard said. Derrick Smith is a lifelong Newark resident who said he was lucky to snag a two-bedroom apartment in the new building. He remembers Baxter Terrace and knows it wasn’t the type of place he would have picked to raise his young son.

“Newark is not all about what people say it is,” said Smith, who pays about $1,000 a month for his rental. “This is the kind of place I want to live to get back on my feet as a bachelor. This is the kind of place where I could see myself staying for a while.”